BL 2750 
, A3 
1879 
Copy 1 

ATHEISM: 


A F EFT FEE 


FELIX SVDLEE, IMF 1)., 


BEFORE THE 


Society for Ethical Culture, 


Sunday, April 6th, 1879. 


PRICE, FIFTBEIST CENTS. 


NEW YORK: 

Co-operative Printers’ Association, 



122 Fulton St. 























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ATH EISM: 

A LECTURE 

—BY— 


FELIX ADLER, PH. D., 


BEFORE THE 


Society for Ethical Culture, 


Sunday, April 6th, 1879. 


SECOND EDITION. 


NEW YORK: 

Co-operative Printers’ Association, 122 Fulton St. 
1879, 









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HERE is an intense desire among the many to obtain 



A. some satisfactory solution of the ultimate problems of 
faith. There comes a time when the youth and the maiden 
find the faith of their childhood escaping them—find that 
what they had hitherto deemed indisputable facts are swathed 
in nebulous doubts, and that the stars in the firmament of the 
soul are veiled. Some there are, and these the majority, who 
after a brief and useless struggle simply yield to the state of 
uncertaint} 7 , and for the remainder of their lives continue to 
halt between two thresholds. But others, more sincere and 
earnest by nature, resolve to push forward toward clear convic¬ 
tions at whatever cost to themselves; and these struggling 
souls we heartily honor, and for their sake we deem it right 
that every one who has himself passed through the sea of 
doubt should hoist his flag and kindle his signal-light upon the 
eminence to which he may have attained, in order that he 
may warn off from the rocks those who are still tossed amid 
the surges of the sea, and show the swimmers where they 
can land upon the shore of safety. 

There is a profound popular prejudice against radical 
innovation in religion. To some extent I sympathize with 
this prejudice. If we put away the intoxications and illu¬ 
sions of the passing moment, and regard human life as it is, 
how little satisfactory often seems the condition of things 
that meets our candid scrutiny. What is the issue of all our 


4 


toil ? we are likely to ask, and what its permanent advan¬ 
tage ? Even the most confirmed pleasure-se&ker, the most 
lethargic epicurean, the most engrossed money-getter, must at 
times become aware of the hollowness and vanity of his accus¬ 
tomed occupations. When nature’s stillness thrills us; when 
in some meditative night the mute eloquence of a far- 
spreading landscape touches deep chords of the inward life ; 
when in moments of joy or sorrow—for both make us sincere 
—we are lifted above routine ; how pitiable, then, appear the 
objects for which the great struggle goes on ! Here is one 
whose only aim is wealth ; to inhabit a palatial mansion, in 
which every article of use or ornament shall be of rare excel¬ 
lence, is his aim, the purpose of a lifetime ! There is another 
who hunts after the bauble fame, to be crowned forsooth by 
fickle fortune for a day, to have his deeds blazoned forth by 
rumor, to leave among late descendants the shadowy memory 
of a name! And even when the aims which men set them¬ 
selves are more noble, how seldom are the } 7 reached ! Our 
life remains such a mere broken fragment, our endeavors are 
at best so quickly cut oft*, our destiny is so little that we must 
needs bind it to a larger destiny. That, alone can reconcile 
us to existence, that we look upon it as the means of fulfilling 
a purpose wholly worthy of the greatest sufferings, the hard¬ 
est sacrifices, as a link in a chain. A link regarded in itself 
may be petty and insignificant, but if we remember that it 
makes the indispensable connection between innumerable 
links like itself, all joining to form an endless glorious chain, 
then how unspeakably great may become the importance 
even of the smallest link. And so our life shall be regarded 
as a link in the chain of generations, our existence as a scale 
on the ladder of perfection, I have said that in moments of 


5 


exaltation the common objects of life appear despicable. 
There is one object, however, whose transcendent value shines 
out with all the brighter lustre the more the others are ob_ 
scured ; and this is the subjection of the soul to the moral law • 
The laws of nature cannot compare with the moral law; the 
wonders exhibited by astronomy, the distances of the fixed 
stars, the infinity of worlds, the sweep of the planets in their 
orbits through millions and millions of miles, the regularity 
with which they return unswervingly along their paths 
through the immensities, the inexpressible grandeur of the 
material universe dwindles beside the grandeur of the human 
soul in its sense of responsibility in guilt and goodness. 

.Now, while the common people do not clearly appre¬ 
ciate, they yet dimly feel the sublime value which the law of 
righteousness gives to our lives, and they cling to the belief 
in a moral order, perceiving truly that human life would be¬ 
come wholly intolerable if we indeed believed ourselves to 
be blown about by winds of chance, the sport of blind forces 
that wound and pain and crush and grind to no purpose, 
with no compensating good to be achieved by so much suf¬ 
fering. The natural feelings of mankind, on this account, 
revolt against the doctrine of chance in any guise, and the 
people are justified in declaring him an enemy of the human 
race who lessens the respect in which the eternal ethical 
values are held. But if we are thus cheered to behold men, 
even in their outbursts of fanaticism, moved by the desire 
to protect what is really sacred, it is, on the other hand, 
inexpressibly saddening to perceive that owing to ignorance 
and superstition they constantly mistake the best friends of 
the good for its foes, and, like wild beasts, turn to rend their 
truest benefactors. “ There is a time to act for the Lord by 


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breaking his commandments,” was a current saying among 
the ancient Hebrews. That means there is a time to act 
for religion by protesting against what is named religion ; 
there is a time to prepare for a larger morality by dashing to 
atoms the too narrow forms of dogma in which the morality 
of the age is preserved. But the multitude understand not 
this necessity, feel not the breath of the larger freedom that 
comes to them amid the discords of innovation, as the spring 
comes amid showers and storms. And thus it happens that 
the most religious souls have ever been persecuted in the 
name of religion, and that the enthusiasts of morality have 
. been execrated as destroyers of the good. 

During the coming week will be celebrated once again 
the sacrifice and death of the Nazarene. Throughout the broad 
domain of Christendom there are solemn pageants at this 
season; the churches are in mourning; weary, melancholy 
chants harrow the hearts of the devotees; they macerate 
their flesh and confess their sins in honor of the slain Son of 
God. Say not Son of God, but son of man. Bead in the 
story of his life and death the pathetic tale of an impassioned 
teacher who yearned to be a helper to the wretched, a child¬ 
like nature that reproduced in itself the grace and loveliness 
of childhood, the preacher of a grander virtue than his people 
were ripe for. He died at “ the Tyburn of his nation” the 
death of a criminal because he had the aspirations of an 
angel. But not he only. Countless others have suffered like 
him in the public pillory or on the scaffold or on the rack of 
secret inward agonies, simply because their religion was too 
fine for the gross masses that hunted them down, to under¬ 
stand. Was there ever a more magnanimous, genial, health¬ 
ful nature than that of Socrates ? Others might be prudent; 


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he was wise. For there is a difference between prudence 
and wisdom, in that prudence selects right means to any end, 
but wisdom selects great ends only and right means to those 
ends. The accusers of Socrates were prudent in that they 
compassed his death, but he was wise in that he yielded his 
life for the sake of the laws. Hardly can words be found in 
the literature of any people so simple and yet so sated with the 
rich sap of truth as those with which Socrates met his judges. 
He would not weep and supplicate for life, as they desired 
him to do; that were unworthy. He would not cease from 
discoursing on virtue, as they demanded, because virtue is 
the very life of life. He would not throw away his convic¬ 
tions, because he said: “I am a soldier, and a soldier must 
not throw away his weapons, and my convictions are my 
weapons.” He said: “ I am an old man and slow in my 
walk. Now, there are two evils that pursue men, the one is 
death and the other guilt, and death is slower than guilt; 
therefore I, being slow, have been overtaken by the slower of 
the pursuers, but my enemies, being hasty and violent, have 
been overtaken by the swifter. I, therefore, am the captive 
of death, but they shall be known as the captives of guilt for¬ 
ever.” A man capable of such sentiments, a man who when 
his prison door was opened would not pass through that door 
to liberty, because he said, “It is better that an unjust law 
shall be fulfilled and I perish rather than that I be pre¬ 
served and the law-abiding spirit of the people take injury 
through my example ”—this man, therefore, was accused and 
condemned to drink his own death from the hemlock cup on 
the charge of Atheism. 

And the same charge of Atheism, friends, has been 
launched against unnumbered others, even against men like 


s 


Sir Isaac Newton and La Place. The epithet “Atheist ” is 
a poisoned missile; it wounds not only, but leaves the 
wound it makes to rankle and spread its venom. The 
charge of Atheism is used with fatal effect to inflame the 
fears of the populace; then all reason is at an end, then 
a cloud of prejudice obscures the real merits of the question 
at issue, then fierce discord is introduced into the bosom of 
families, while the designing malice which has created all 
this confusion in all likelihood fattens on the follies of those 
whom it has duped. There ought to be some means of put¬ 
ting a check upon the dangerous and often knavish misuse 
of the term Atheism, and I think one of the surest means 
to effect this object will be to examine what may be the 
grounds on which Theism rests and what per contrast is the 
proper signification of Atheism. 

There are three leading theories of the universe. The 
first is Theism, affirming that the world was created by an 
Eternal Being, that there was a time when the world did 
not exist and that it was called into existence by the fiat of a 
personal God. 

The second is Pantheism, affirming that the world 
existed from eternity, even as God has existed from eternity, 
and that God pervades the world as the soul pervades the 
body. 

The last is Atheism, affirming that the world is given 
over to the rule of chance. 

If now we examine the grounds on which Theism rests— 
I shall endeavor to give the Kantian metaphysical statement 
in as plain language as possible—we find that there are 
three great arguments to which all other arguments for the 
existence of God are reducible. The first may be called the 


9 


argument from perfection * the second, the argument from 
the necessity of a First Cause / and the third, the a/rgument 
from the marks of design in nature. 

The argument from perfection runs as follows : There 
is possible to the mind of man and arises within him in 
moments of meditation the conception of a perfect Being 
free from all the weaknesses which we detect in ourselves, a 
Being not hampered by the limitations of time and space, 
whose power is unrestricted, therefore called omnipotent ; 
whose knowledge is unbounded, therefore called omniscient; 
a Being that feels no pain, no, nor the unrestful bounding of 
the emotions in joy; a Being that remains in absolute 
repose and yet sheds beneficent influence round about him, 
even as the sun sheds its rays, and however many the eyes 
that drink them in, its light is not thereby diminished. 
Now, therefore, if we have in our minds the conception of a 
Being including within himself the perfection of all quali¬ 
ties, it follows that this Being must also possess the quality 
of existence; for if he did not possess the quality of exist¬ 
ence, then would he be imperfect in so far as he lacked 
that quality. But we have started with the conception of 
a perfect Being, hence the conclusion follows that Cod exists. 

It is indeed surprising that an argument of this kind 
should have maintained so respectable a position among 
thinking persons for so long a time as this really has. It 
was first put forth by Anselmus of Canterbury, a famous 
divine of the Middle Ages ; has since been repeated, parrot¬ 
like, by hosts of his followers, and is still paraded with great 
unction in modern text-books and encyclopedias. But the 
argument is a shallow sophism, and the fatal flaw is easily 
perceived. It is this : simply that existence is not a quality, 


10 


but a condition—a Condition which may or may not belong 
to any conception of the mind, even as experience, and experi¬ 
ence alone can demonstrate. Thus, we may have in our minds 
an absolutely accurate conception of the fabulous island of the 
“ Grail,” or of the Golden City, or of fairyland ; yet the fact 
that we have a complete conception of these places does not 
at all prove that they exist. Kant has crushed the argument 
from perfection by simply remarking that we may have in our 
mind a 1 perfectly complete and accurate conception of an 
hundred dollars, and of course in like manner of a million 
dollars, but that the perfection and accuracy of our concep¬ 
tion will not place even a single coin into our purse. Thus, 
too, we may have a perfect and accurate conception of a 
Divine Being—a conception, moreover, which shall be as 
grand and inspiring as you will—and yet the mere fact that 
we have this conception in mind does not at all prove that 
there corresponds to it a reality outside of our minds. 

The second argument for the existence of God is that 
from the necessity of a First Cause. I have before alluded 
to this argument, but it will be necessary to repeat my state-' 
ment, for it is important that it should be grasped clearly. 

There is no effect without a cause. If you hear a footstep 
on the stair, you know some one is coming; if you hear 
thunder, you know there are electrical discharges. If you 
see ice, you know there has been cold. If you behold the 
first flowers raise their inquisitive heads, you know spring is 
coming. Now look at the great aggregate of causes and 
effects. The mind asks of this effect what is its cause, and 
the cause of that cause, and the cause of that, and on, and on, 
and on, until we grow dizzy, being whirled away into this 
maelstrom of causation, and spinning round and round in 


11 


interminable circles, and it seems like madness coming over 
us. Then by a superhuman effort we seek to free ourselves, 
and struggle to lay hold of some firm point, and we say— 
First Cause, thereon we will rest. And for a while we rest, 
but after a time returns that inevitable question once more, 
and lo, Mephistopheles at our elbow nods and smiles, and 
says, “And pray, sir, since you have found the First Cause, 
what is the cause of that cause?” If God made the world, 
what God made God, and what God that God ? And so 
once more, and madder and wilder than before, the whirl of 
thoughts goes on, and we find no exit. 

And then there is another answer which has been given 
to the argument for a First Cause. Whenever a cause is pres¬ 
ent its effect must immediately follow. Fire melts wax ; 
when fire is present and applied to wax, wax must melt. 
There can be no break in time between the presence of the 
cause and its efficiency. Now, if God is the cause and the 
world is His effect, then as soon as God existed the world 
must have followed. But God existed from eternity; there¬ 
fore the world also was from eternity. And thus again the 
whole notion of cause and effect as applied to the Infinite 
proves self-contradictory and explodes. 

The third and by far the most fascinating and popular 
argument for the existence of God is that from the marks of 

ft 

design in nature. If you see a table you say some one must 
have made it. If you enter a house with well-fashioned 
apartments designed for certain uses, with ornaments exhib¬ 
iting a certain style, you will say some one must have built 
this house; nor could any one persuade you that the mate¬ 
rials of the house could have put themselves together of their 
own accord. Now, if this is true of a table and a house, if 


12 


the table has its maker and the house its builder, how much 
more must it be true that the world had its maker and that 
this vast structure of the universe had its builder ? In mod¬ 
ern times the argument from the marks of design in nature 
has been vigorously assailed by the followers of Darwin. The 
Darwinist says to the theologian: “You misread nature. 
What you interpret as marks of design, as evidence of an in¬ 
telligence that consciously adapts means to ends, is in reality 
no more than a chance result cast up in the course of the 
struggle for existence, and can be explained by the law of 
the survival of the fittest.” 

I am not prepared to speak upon the question of Dar¬ 
winism. I deem it the duty of the layman in matters of 
science to accept what the most competent authorities affirm 
to be true. Still it does not seem to me that the absence of 
design or of a purpose in the construction of the universe 
can be established in the manner indicated. For however 
great the play of accident may be within certain limits, this 
at least will be conceded, this at least seems undeniable— 
that higher and higher forms are evolved in the course of 
the struggle for existence, and the fact that higher forms 
should be evolved is not explained by accident and the 
ascending line of evolution is not intelligible upon the 
assumption of chance. At the same time the argument 
from design has never been demonstrated and I am quite 
sure will never be demonstrated. Grant even that we do 
find in nature the marks of an adapting intelligence, what 
then? Call God the Master Architect, but what is the 
office of the architect ? To order, to arrange, to join in 
forms of beauty and utility the material which he has ready 
at hand. But who has ever heard that an architect creates 


also the material which he uses ? Therefore even if God 
could he demonstrated as the Architect of Nature that 
would not yet at all prove him the Creator of Nature. 
And more, if we reason backward from external facts 
to their originator or fashioner, we are at liberty to ascribe 
to Him only so much intelligence, wisdom, goodness as the 
facts actually exhibit. Now regard the facts in a spirit of 
straightforward sincerity. True, he might be called a thank¬ 
less clown who could deny that there is much that is noble 
and beautiful in the world. Who that has ever seen the 
glory of lake and hills and stars and sea could deny it? 
Who that has ever felt the liberating wind blow about him, 
or rising from his sleep has gone forth on some early morning 
in the spring and heard the thousand birds send up their carols, 
and felt as it were sympathetically the universal growth 
around him, but must have experienced what a luxury mere 
existence sometimes is? And if we regard the world of the 
Human, the endless wealth of friendship, the ecstatic affini¬ 
ties of love, the divine joys of maternity—if we ponder these 
things how are we moved to exclaim in gladness, “The world 
is beautiful indeed.” But again I raise my warning, a warn¬ 
ing that may sound harshly enough in many an ear, saying, let 
us be honest. There is a black counterpart to the picture ; this 
also let us consider. For happiness, then, man was created ! 
Is it for the happiness of their peoples that the plague has 
devastated the blighted countries of the East? Was it for 
the happiness of the inhabitants that the floods poured over 
Szegedin ? Was it for their happiness that China, India and 
Egypt have been swept by famine, and such hecatombs of 
victims have been heaped up that the imagination halts in 
blank stupor before the enormity of the figures? Or, tell me, 


14 


is it for our happiness that nature has invented that endless 
variety of pains that rack the human body in sickness, giving 
such prolonged and subtle torture as the ingenuity of no 
Torquemada has ever sufficed to rival. Or, transcending all 
other forms of ill, is it for human happiness that the throne of 
reason is sometimes shaken, when we say better a thousand 
times dead than thus, thus dead in life, when the truest 
and noblest and best sink to a condition more helpless than 
that of a child, and those who cling to them raise in vain 
their piteous cry to heaven, saying, “ Great God, good God, 
canst thou thus strike us down ?” Arraign Nature, charge her 
with her enormities. Why does she slay the worthiest whom 
we can least afford to lose and preserve the wretches who are 
a burden to themselves, a disgrace to others? Of what avail 
is it that beauty does exist when the great multitude are 
tied down to their tasks and cannot appreciate it. Of 
what avail are all the splendors of the scene when the liends 
of grief clutch the heart and the spiritual eye is darkened ? 
Pondering on these things the soul dwells in night and the 
Tartarus of despair seems yawning to engulf us. To such 
a result the argument from design has led us. It is a vain 
argument, it cannot prove its point. ' No more than it is 
possible to plant one’s foot upon the solid earth and with the 
crown of the head to touch the sky, no more is it possible 
to stand on nature and reach God. 

The argument from peifection has failed. The argu¬ 
ment from the necessity of a First Cause is inconclusive. 
The argument from design plunges us only into the quag¬ 
mire of a deeper doubt. 

But what follows from this ? Only that which all the¬ 
ology nominally concedes, but which we take in its strictly 


literal meaning—namely, that the finite reason of men is in¬ 
capable of grasping the Infinite; that the standards which 
we employ with such signal success within the universe 
prove valueless when we attempt to get out of and beyond 
the universe; that the idea of cause and effect is a bridge 
which, as we travel among the mountains of experience, takes 
us safely over many a chasm, but when we reach the 
verge of the eternities falls lamentably short. Arrived at 
that far station, we see a rainbow arch spanning the vast 
abyss, cheering and hope-giving to behold. But vain indeed 
would he be who should attempt to walk out into the yawn¬ 
ing gulf, hoping to mount into heaven along that shining but 
insubstantial causeway. Is there, then, no certainty? Have 
we no firm convictions concerning the Highest which will 
prove our safeguard in the perilous struggles of life? There 
is, indeed, such a safeguard, and earnestly and with my whole 
soul have I sought to point out how it may be secured. 
To the common people the name ol God stands lor some¬ 
thing gross, material—a Being whom they can approach 
with their thought, whom they can almost leel with their 
senses. But the deeper and finer religious natures have 
at all times felt that the understanding utterly fails before 
the conception of the Supreme. They knew they could not 
describe or define their God with their intellects. They 
thought of Him as of a great Light, in which all vision is 
lost; they strove in rhapsodical language and by signs and 
tokens to indicate the streaming forth of their emotions into 
an ocean of all love. It is marvellous how religious men 
of all creeds and of no creed agree in the essential feelings 
that accompany their convictions—St. John of the Cross, 
Thomas a Kempis, Tauler in the fourteenth century, the 


16 


Hebrew prophets, the modern infidel! It is ever the little 
that rises to be redeemed in the great, the limited that 
aspires unto the unlimited, the confined power of self that is 
made free and pure by merging in the mightier power that 
surges and billows throughout the universe. But this emo¬ 
tional experience, subduing the soul of him whom it seizes, 
producing often revulsions of feeling and changes in character 
for a’lifetime, even because it is so profound, is dim. And 
we require a clear message concerning that supersensual 
order whereof our moral nature bears testimony. We desire 
to know upon what grounds of reason the conviction of the 
existence of such a “ higher world ” may be made to rest. 

Modern philosophy has shown and modern science con¬ 
firms that all that which seems to us most real is but the 
shadow of an existence behind it. The grass, the meadows, 
the everlasting hills, the solid planet, the hard stone, are but 
images in a mirror, and the mirror is our soul. We see 
beautiful colors of flowers, but unimaginable beauty escapes 
us because our vision is not fine enough to receive it. We 
hear ravishing sounds, but the physicist proves that there are 
numberless air-waves which we never appreciate, because the 
instrument of our ear is not fitted to translate them into 
tones. The outside world and its thousandfold phenomena 
knock at the antechambers of the soul, and are received by 
the senses, that are the ushers of the inward life. And these 
usher in whomsoever it pleaseth them, and we are wholly 
dependent on their service. And yet, though we can never 
penetrate to things outward, but remain ever within the pale 
of subjective impressions, we know that the material world 
by which we are surrounded is a reality, and that the images 
in the mirror of the soul are not mere phantoms. We know 

V 


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this because of the Laws. The laws of the mind alone estab¬ 
lish the certainty, the safety, the very sanity of our existence. 
And if this is true of the laws of mind, so far as they relate 
to external things, and we may wholly trust them thus far, 
how much more then shall we trust that highest law which 
we call the Moral Law, which is naught but the supreme 
expression of law, the law universal, and believe that it, too, 
corresponds to a reality deeper than all other reality, a reality 
wiser than we can tell, truer than we can ever demon¬ 
strate. 

But you will say that this is abstract speculation. Let 
us then leave aside abstract speculation and draw plain con¬ 
clusions. The theory of Theism cannot be proved by any 
syllogism ; the theory of Pantheism is still less demonstrable, 
since its fundamental proposition, as in Spinoza’s system, is a 
mere assumption. Also, it may lead to dangerous conse¬ 
quences, inasmuch as it encourages the belief that all that is 
is right—injustice, therefore, and baseness and selfishness 
being in a measure justified, since they, too, are outpourings 
of the divine fountain-head. And lastly, Atheism—well, 
truly, if that means the denial of a being conceived by supersti¬ 
tious mortals in the image of themselves, a “ big man ” above 
the clouds, then the sooner we accept Atheism the better. 
But then some of the greatest and truest teachers of religion 
whom mankind to-day honors and loves, yea, celebrates in 
admiration and in pride, have been Atheists ; and we should 
esteem it no mean privilege to be numbered among the least 
of their disciples. But if Atheism means—and this, in 
any proper definition of the word, alone it does mean—the 
assertion of the rule of chance, the denial of the transcendent 
importance of morality, the blasphemy against the Ideal, 


18 


then is there no system from which we so deeply, so utterly 
revolt as this. 

Long enough now have we kept silence; long enough 
have we allowed the charge of Atheism to be brought against 
us with indifference because we believed it to be dictated by 
personal motives. But there comes a time for breaking 
silence. The work which this Society has begun is growing. 

I cannot bear the thought that any of those who are really 
at heart with us should be separated from us by an odious 
name, an untrue alarm. I say, then, that the charge of 
Atheism as directed against this Society is false, and I am 
compelled to fling back the charge upon the very head of 
those who most persistently urge it. For in an age like 
ours, big with tremendous problems, requiring brave Warn¬ 
ers to stir the moral sense of the people and hard workers to 
clear away the Augean heaps of wrong—who, then, are the 
godless ones ?—they who with whatever weak effect and lim¬ 
ited strength put their shoulders to the wheels, striving to 
raise the car of progress from its age-long rut, or they who 
loll by the wayside, rehearsing an ancient liturgy, repeating 
for the ten thousandth time some threadbare text, themselves 
panderers to the prejudices which they should curb, them¬ 
selves worshipers at the unclean shrine of Mammon ? 
Atheists indeed ! Is this a time to dispute concerning Athe¬ 
ism ? To waste energies on matters of creed at all? Is 
there not yjorh that cries out to us that we shall do it? Is 
not this a time for all to help who can help in whatever name 
they choose to do so, to bring the immediate and most 
manifold relief that is needed, and to fill the great wants of 
humanity that have too long, too long been neglected ? Ah ! 
but workers we must have. That will be the main test 


19 


of religions teachers, that they really work. The people 
must be aroused, their eyes must be opened, their indigna¬ 
tion must be stirred, that they may drive the drones of 
dogma from their pulpits and place there leaders who will 
lead them to the good. „ 

The people want a confession of faith, I am told. Hear, 
then, mine a simple one. I believe in the supreme ex¬ 
cellence of righteousness; I believe that the law of righteous¬ 
ness will triumph in the universe over all evil; I believe that 
in the law of righteousness is the sanctification of human 
life, and I believe that in furthering and fulfilling that law I 
also am hallowed in the service of the unknown God. 






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